Monday, October 16, 2006

Neighborhood Renewal

Our neighbors up the street had a baby--a little boy who is now three months old. They live in the house where some other friends lived, and we had dinner in that house when the Pony was about a year and a half old.

It's hard to believe that it's been that long--Pony is now in seventh grade and is taller than I am. Back then, she was so little, that when the little boy came to show us his Halloween costume, she couldn't say "Thomas the Tank Engine."

"It's Thomas the Tikken!"

Now, she's the elder statesman of the neighborhood, and the new parents are keeping their eyes on her as a future babysitter. And she's the same age as the babysitters we used to hire. These things happen when you live in one place for fifteen years: babysitters go off to college, the babies grow up and start sitting for the newest neighbors.

Our neighbor mentioned that the baby would be able to say "bye bye" in about nine months. And the incredible thing is that when my kidlets were three months old, I absolutely could not imagine that much time ever passing. Parenting is hard hard work, and one of the hardest things is how time absolutely DOES NOT pass. Dooce describes it as struggling to make through ten minutes, in order to then struggle through the ten minutes after THAT. I remember thinking that I was going to die before making it through the first two weeks of breast-feeding--two weeks felt like an eternity.

But now--hey! Nine months--that's no time at all! Nine months from now is next summer, and we already have theater tickets for farther ahead than that. Nine months is nothing at all anymore. I feel like I'm living in sync with the rest of the world now--but I still got a visceral kick of remembrance about how long nine months can be.

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